BirdingNZ.net

This sounds really cool! But the link to the website seems to just go to a rather blank site at the moment?

Liam Ballard wrote:I will claim the Taranaki record of 48 if no-one else does...

Cheers Liam.

web site still under construction will let you know when its finished

Hey team!

I'm working on the website and would very much value any input with regards with which checklist to use.

At the moment, this is what I have done in the way of set-up (obviously not all the birds are listed there yet, but I am working on it): www.birdathon.co.nz/checklist

People can search for the bird they want information on, and then click through to the listing on New Zealand Birds Online for more information, bird calls, descriptions, images, etc.

I'm also looking into the best way to record actual observations. So far looking into eBird, Nature Watch. The other option is that we ask people to use a form and manually enter the data later (though that could be a lot of work).

My preference is Nature Watch because it has an open API that I can essentially use to embed a form into the website directly. If you've taken part in the Great Kererū Count, you will have seen that set up in action.

@George - can't wait to see your map. We can 100% embed it in the website. Woo!

Hey Kimberley,

I'm going to advocate against Naturewatch (even though it is easier from the developers point of view). It doesn't have the feature where you can record checklists of multiple different species, all in one report - so in essence if I was at Waikanae beach, I'd need to do heaaaaps of different entries, like one for pied shag, one for little shag, one for WF tern, one for VOC, one for Black-backed gulls and so on and so on.
Whereas with eBird I can keep one single list for the whole day, it'll record how many km I travel and I just add species and numbers to that list as I go..... Hope that makes sense.

I'll FB you the map link as soon as I've got it done

Cool index thing on the website, can I suggest that you maybe use the more commonly accepted names for birds in NZ e.g. Grey Warbler vs Gray Gerygone?

Hi George,

I agree with you regarding using eBird in preference to NatureWatch. I'd sent Kimberley a PM about this earlier in the day, but in light of your message thought it might be useful to re-post on the public thread for others to see. Here goes:

Hi Kimberley,

I've been following progress on the planning of the NZ Big Day Birdathon with great interest, I think it's a great idea!

If you're still looking into options for a system to record observations on the day, I'd strongly advocate you to use eBird in preference to NatureWatch. I've been a keen user of these citizen science databases for a number of years, and have formed the view that eBird is the far superior system for recording citizen science bird observations in NZ.

There are a few reasons for this, namely:

- Observations submitted to eBird have a far greater likelihood of being put to use to inform the conservation of birds and their habitats in NZ, and to carry out new research on trends in the distribution and abundance of birds, so any birder submitting their observations to eBird will therefore also be making more of a contribution towards bird conservation in NZ than if they used NatureWatch. One reason behind this difference is that eBird structures observations into complete checklists, which are far more useful when it comes to mapping bird distribution than simple one-off records are. Another reason is that eBird has much more robust data checking systems chugging away behind the scenes, so is far better at weeding out erroneous observations than NatureWatch is. The flow-on effect from this being that researchers and conservation managers can have far greater confidence in the reliability of eBird data than they can of NatureWatch data.

- Many of the birders likely to participate in the Birdathon are also already habitual eBird users, so by using eBird for the Birdathon, your participants won't have to learn how to use a novel reporting system just for that one day.

- In terms of size, eBird also dwarfs NatureWatch when it comes to the number of citizen science bird records that it holds. eBird currently holds over 750,000 bird observations for New Zealand, whereas NatureWatch contains only a few tens of thousands. So if you'd like your Birdathon participants to add their data to the largest repository of citizen science bird observations in NZ, then eBird is the database to use.

I understand that there might be some technical reasons behind your preference to use NatureWatch (i.e. the availability of open API), however I'd encourage you to weigh this convenience up against what your wider goals of holding a Birdathon are. As well as creating a fun birding event, and engaging a number of birders in the process, the observations that are collected on the day could also be put to great use by conservation agencies if participants were given the opportunity to add them to eBird, rather than NatureWatch. And it would be a real shame if all that effort spent by all of us experienced birders wasn't put to good use...

I'm not at all experienced with website or database design, so I'm afraid I'm no help when it comes to giving you tips on how best to integrate eBird into your Birdathon website. What I do know though is that there is a precedent for eBird to be used for these sorts of events - every year in May eBird runs a "Global Big Day" (essentially a worldwide Birdathon), with tens of thousands of participants from around the world (including a dedicated few from NZ) submitting their Big Day observations via eBird. You can navigate to the following link to have a look at how the global big day eBird page is set up: http://ebird.org/ebird/globalbigday.

I hope this feedback is of help, and best of luck with planning this event!

Best regards,
Nikki

Was thinking that either or both methods could be used but am leaving it up to our volunteers who are building the web site the choice.

cheers mark

Well the web site is live now http://birdathon.co.nz

so you can register if you like

and please encourage your friends evan if just a family has a go its all good FUN

cheers Mark

Hi everyone! It sounds like eBird is the best option. I downloaded the app but found it exceptionally difficult to use. My main concern is that I don't want to turn people who have never been involved with something like this.

Wondering if I should try to contact the people behind eBird to find out if it can be embedded into the website - always grateful for help, so let me know if you have any ideas.

Perhaps we need two options:

1. People who are comfortable using eBird use it.
2. A tick list that can be submitted at the end of the Big Day that volunteers can enter into eBird later on.

P.S. I have embedded George's awesome map onto the website!